I don’t want this to read like the worst kind of over-sentimentalised soap opera but, at the same time, I think its important to move away from statistical data, even broad-stroke pictures of society as a whole, and hone in on how the Crash affected millions of American families. Its important because, as historians, we have to think about people.
I’m going to consider two types of family: the first may seem as if it had little to lose when in fact it had, whilst the other family had been doing well, it had been “comfortable”, but was well and truly shaken out of its comfort zone.
The first family is a poor family. In some ways they aren’t affected as much. Life was a struggle before the Crash, it was still a struggle after it. But they are likely to be left homeless, whether this be from a run-down apartment in a poor neighbourhood in the city or their very basic farmstead in rural America. Their low-paid jobs have gone or their small farm has gone. These are the people we find in the Hoovervilles or on treks into California looking for fruit-picking jobs. Many men left their families to search for work – living as Hobos on the railways, their families coping as best they could. Their children would not be attending school.
The better-off families found themselves slipping into the abyss. They would be falling further than those poorer families and so psychologically as well as materially, the fall would be harder to deal with. They had literally bought into the materialism of the boom years. This might have included buying a house and buying a car. The house would have been bought on a mortgage, the car and much of the comforts of their home, on hire purchase. But these would soon be lost and, with prices crashing, they not only wouldn’t get their deposits back, they would be selling at a loss. So, debts were piling up. Still, they might be able to come away with some funds and though, those comforts would be gone there would be some semblance of stability. Perhaps.
But we have to dig deeper still. The stress on relationships, between parents particularly. The personal stress on those parents. The father (the most likely main breadwinner in 1920s America) feeling he is letting his family down, the wife trying to cope with children who are frightened and hungry. What will quickly follow is health problems, anxiety or complete breakdowns, and diseases, particularly as living conditions deteriorate dangerously for those poorer families, but also stress leaves us less able to cope with the regular colds, influenzas other things that will have no respect for the economic crisis. This is the reality. And it must have been truly awful.